April Genevieve Tucholke
The Boneless Mercies
You love exploring abandoned houses. If you were a ghost and had to live in one abandoned place forever, which place would you choose?
Oh, that’s a tough call. I’ve got a long list—I love to watch youtube vids of people exploring abandoned places. I find it utterly fascinating. (Speaking of, the video game What Remains of Edith Finch is essentially about a girl exploring her abandoned family mansion—I highly recommend). Narrowing it down, I guess I’d have to choose the Castle of Sammezzano near Florence. It has beautiful, technicolor Moorish Revival architecture and 365 rooms.
Boneless Mercies is a gender-bent Beowulf reimagining, what drew you to that world in the first place?
When I set out to write a fantasy about the friendship and love shared between four stoic female warriors, my admiration of Beowulf (and History channel’s Vikings) made me want to set my book in a similar world. Beowulf is one of the oldest known stories, and any tale that has been present in people’s minds this long has power. Beowulf has everything an epic story needs—heroes, monsters, glory, tragedy, poetry. I tried to weave all these things into The Boneless Mercies.
Our festival slogan is “Read Everything.” What one book would you like to see on our official “Read Everything” list for 2018?
I recently listened to The Hidden Life of Trees via audiobook, and it changed my life. Now, when I walk through a forest, I think about the trees talking to each other, and how they can feel pain, and loneliness. The Ents from The Lord of the Rings are real